Page 168 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

named Danny. Kubrick uses these two characters to represent the conflicted parts of his own nature.
The son Danny represents the artistic, creative, innocent, and carefree aspect of Kubrick, while the
father Jack represents a more calculating and businesslike part of his nature. In the movie the father
has a dream where he murders his wife and son, hacking them into little pieces. Later on he attempts
to do so, but fails. This signifies the conflict that arose in Kubrick’s life when he made a lucrative
deal with the government to fake the Apollo missions, an action which nearly killed his artistic and
more childlike nature and threatened his family’s existence.

As the movie begins we see Jack arriving at The Overlook Hotel where he has agreed to serve as the
winter caretaker. There are no guests at the hotel in the winter, and we are informed that the greatest
stress of the job is its isolation. This would certainly be true of anyone working on faking the Apollo
Moon missions, for they would not be able to tell anyone what they were doing. As Jack enters the
hotel manager’s office, we observe some of the minutiae of detail which Kubrick has arranged to
inform us that what we are viewing is a representation of his own meeting with the U.S. government
when he agreed to take on the Apollo assignment.

The hotel manager is dressed in red, white, and blue. Behind him in the window is a statue of an
eagle, the symbol of America as well as the name of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module.

As the camera zooms in on the manager, we see a U.S. flag on his desk. The manager’s name is
Stuart Ullman, whose initials when written last name first would be U.S.. His first and last name also
have the exact same number of characters as United States. Jay Weidner points out that the manager
is wearing a toupe which makes him resemble John F. Kennedy, the U.S. President who publicly
initiated the lunar program.

During the interview we learn that Jack is a writer and part of the deal he strikes is that as long as